On the making of the album, Common said “I created this music for the summer time, it’s about feeling good… this is the type of music I felt was missing from my body of work.”
Which is why he released it in December!
This album, being the first one I’ve reviewed in ages, is like a horse with a broken leg. It’s struggling to move and it’s dragging it’s nearly dead body through the mud, but you know that it’s going to have to go to the glue factory sooner or later.
This album is like turning up to an empty playground, on your own, in winter. There’s a promise of something fun and nice and exciting, but after 5 minutes of sitting around, maybe going on the swings by yourself, you get incredibly bored and just want to go home, get drunk and shout at the T.V.
There are songs that sound, in the first 4-5 seconds to be kind of entertaining with interesting beats and cool rhythms, but once you hit the 10 second mark, you realize that it’s actually not very good and there ensues the kind of tedium that is usually reserved for maths lessons.
Tedious is probably the best way to describe this album. I may have found a new cure for insomnia.
It’s a shame because I seem to remember Common being pretty cool in the past, but maybe I’m thinking of someone else.
Once I struggle to the end of each song, the next one starts and instantly I recognize the promise of the new song, and again, very quickly, the boredom sets in once more.
Listen to this album: After you’ve brushed your teeth, as you may fall asleep.
I’ve not really paid much attention to The Streets since Original Pirate Material and so when I’m told that this album is more like the music we heard on that album, I really just have to take their word for it.
Whenever I listen to The Streets in the background and don’t really listen to it, I feel that I’ve missed out on the stories in the songs. The music itself is the same minimalistic style that I associate with The Streets, and it’s quite pleasurable. Some of the slower and minimalist songs end up being a bit long and start to get dull by the end of the song and I find myself wanting to skip these tracks after 2/3 of the track. The slower ones that have a more full composition are a lot more interesting. Take ‘The Edge of a Cliff’ for example, it has some really nice harmonies and is filled to the brim with different instruments and singing and thus it’s very exciting, I even let out a little ‘woop’ of joy in the middle of the song.The most annoying songs on the album are the ones that need more words than it’s given and Mike Skinner is rapping slower, so that he can fit the small number of words in a big space. ‘Never give in’ is prime suspect for this crime and I’m like “SAY MORE WORDS!!”
The faster songs are really good, and hold the top spot on my ‘The Streets – Everything is Borrowed chart of good songs’, ‘The way of the dodo’ taking the #1 spot.
I’m sometimes a bit mixed up by The Streets. Sometimes the sentement seems a bit forced, like I’m being told that I MUST feel an emotion because of the song. I don’t like this.
‘The strongest person I know’ is one of these songs that puts a sentement snooker ball in a sock and hits me on the back of the head with it. Emotion in songs, sometimes, needs to be like the smell of nice food, where it entices you in and you follow it and find the tasty treat one you search a bit, not a pie in the face.
Overall, the noises coming out of my speakers are quite pleasurable, but it’s a little bit long in the tooth.
Listen to this album: While rocking backwards and forwards
70%
Extracts from ‘The way of the dodo’, ‘On the edge of a cliff’, ‘Never give in’ and ‘The strongest person I know’
I have been listening to this album constantly since I got it and it has taken preference in my listening time than any of the other albums that came out this last week, yet it is one of the last I am reviewing.
“WHY?” I hear you cry. Well, it’s because I can’t think of anything that can equal the brilliance of this album.
Having listened to the mix track made available on their website, I felt a touch disappointed with what the album might have been, it seemed a touch weak and like it had more bits that were softer than bits that were thumping Drum and Bass.
Once I listened to the album in full, it just blew my mind. Pendulum have managed to just about match ‘Hold your colour’, but not better it, although you couldn’t actually expect them to better what I consider to be one of the best albums ever created.
Yes, it is a touch softer than some of their work, and while this didn’t work in the short mix track, when it’s spread over the whole album, it seems so much more balanced. The weight on each end of the scale is almost perfectly matched and it sits there. The only thing wrong with this album is that sometimes the softer bits go on a little to long before it really kicks in, but this is just me splitting hairs over it really.
You can’t listen to this album quietly, you need it loud, with the bass high to get everything out of this album. My PC speakers didn’t do it justice, but when I put it on loud on big speakers, it really did take the album to a whole new, fantastic level.
In Silico ticks all the boxes. It is simply amazing.
There really aren’t any words that can tell you how amazing the album is. Just get it and listen for yourself.
Listen to this album: With the bass turned to 11.
Rating: 96%
Extracts from ‘Showdown’, ‘Midnight Runner’ and ‘Granite’
This is a dance version of calligraphy. It’s swirly and curly and appealing at first glance, but when you try to read it, you can’t really see what the content is. The album is a rather pleasant sounding experience, for the most part and I very much enjoyed it while I was listening to it, but once the album had finished, I felt rather empty inside, like there wasn’t any point to what I’d just heard. There isn’t any conviction to the music. Dance music is supposed to capture you and whisk you away, but this album doesn’t do that.
I was personally rather indifferent to Moby until I saw him on Never Mind the Buzzcocks and thought he was hilarious. This caused me to take rather a liking to the man, but I still stayed indifferent to his music.
This album is like the weak kid at school who keeps trying to be everyone’s friend, but nobody wants anything to do with him, even though he is generally pleasant, he’s not friend material and it’s the same with this album, the songs are nice but they don’t really make me want to buy the album.
The best songs on the album take a step in the right direction and make me wish the rest of the album had the same determination as these songs.
There’s only one outstandingly bad song on the album, and that is ‘Everyday it’s 1989′ which is just too much for me to handle, it has some wailing woman all the way through and I just want her to just SHUT UP!
The best songs on the album are ‘257.zero’, ‘Alice’ and ‘The Stars’ which all combine decent beats, cool funky sounds and some great use of words.
You know when somebody gets turned into an insect on TV and it shows the world from their perspective, and everything sounds like it’s coming from far away and muffled and slightly strange. Well that’s the effect this album has on you. It’s like they just stuck a tiny microphone in the ears of various different insects,and recorded the sounds that came through.
This mess of noises was then fed through a synthesiser and stripped down to it’s most prominent noises and slapped on CD and shipped off for people to listen to. If you listen carefully, you might just hear that conversation you has with your mistress the other week, you thought nobody was listening, but there was a literal fly on the wall that overheard.
All the songs on the album, are quite slow and boring, with glimpses of interesting material in the background that if you listen closely, you’ll just be able to hear, but it seems like too much hard work for such little content.
Listen to this album: Crawling in the grass.
Rating: 63%
Extracts from ‘Out There On The Ice’, ‘Midnight Runner’, ‘Far Away’ and ‘Nobody Lost, Nobody Found’
